…A Dangerous Thing (24 page)

Joynell
had her hands on Samantha's shoulders, and she was propelling the grieving widow back into the aisle.
 
The crowd suddenly fell silent, and those around the pew moved away to make room.

". . . and try to act dignified!"
Joynell
said as she shoved Samantha into the waiting arms of her family.

Samantha looked as if she wanted to make another dive at
Joynell
, but her mother and her father-in-law restrained her.
 
Joynell
glowered at her and straightened her dress.
 
Mal stood beside his wife looking mortified.
 
Burns didn't blame him, although
Joynell
didn't look upset at all.
 
A little disheveled, maybe, but not upset.

The pallbearers had successfully gotten the casket out of the church during the interruption, but the aisle was packed with curious onlookers.
 
They got back to their seats, and Samantha and her family walked slowly on out of the church.
 
Instead of the usual respectful silence, there was the buzz of many whispered conversations.
 
Burns thought he could guess the topic of every one of them.

"Still think your buddies didn't have anything to do with the murder?" Napier asked.

Burns just shook his head.

S
amantha and her family didn't linger outside the church for the traditional words of comfort from friends.
 
They piled into the waiting limousine for the ride to the cemetery and sat there behind the closed doors and rolled-up windows.
 
Burns suspected that the family was holding Samantha under house arrest to keep her from creating any more incidents.

Napier pulled Burns aside as they left the building and jerked his head toward a towering pecan tree near the street.
 
Burns asked Elaine to wait for him and walked with Napier to the tree, away from the crowd, most of whom were still talking about what had happened inside.

"I got a question for you, Burns," Napier said.

"What?
 
And why didn't you put a stop to that fight?"

"That wasn't any of my business.
 
Just shows that Mrs. Henderson really believes those women are to blame."

"They aren't."

"So you say.
 
But I want to ask you about something else.
 
That name you gave me."

A breeze moved the leaves of the pecan tree, rustling them together.
 
A car hummed by in the street.
 
Burns watched it move on down the block.

"Did you check on the name?" he asked.

"Yeah.
 
And now I know why I remembered it.
 
Maybe you were right.
 
Maybe I saw it on
America's Most Wanted
.
 
I'm sure there was a show on the guy, but it could have been
Unsolved Mysteries
."

Burns couldn't believe it.
 
"You're kidding."

"Nope.
 
Now what I want to know is why you wanted me to check on that name."

"I was just curious.
 
I ran across it somewhere."

"Don't try to mess with me, Burns."

"I'm not."
 
Curiosity filled Burns.
 
"Tell me what you found out."

Napier brought out his little notebook, scanned a page, and said, "
Mitchum
is one of those radicals from the seventies who got himself in a heap of trouble and then just disappeared.
 
Nobody's seen or heard from him in twenty years."

Or maybe he has been heard from
, Burns thought.
 
Maybe he's been around all along, under another name
.

"I don't remember seeing the story," he said.
 
"What kind of trouble are we talking about?"

"According to him, he didn't do anything."

"Then why would he be on one of those crime shows?"

"Because according to the FBI, he
did
do something.
 
He was part of a bank robbery in California.
 
He was the driver of the getaway car."

Good lord,
Burns thought.

Napier leaned his back against the tree and put a foot up on the trunk.
 
"His story was that he was just a victim.
 
Four guys kidnapped him at gunpoint, forced him to drive to the bank, and one of them held a pistol on him while the other three went in and committed the robbery."

"Who were the guys?" Burns asked.

"Part of some bunch that called themselves FTP.
 
Free the People.
 
They were going to use the money from the bank to overthrow the government, or something like that.
 
But something went wrong and a guard got shot.
 
Mitchum
took off with the guy in his car, but they wound up wrapped halfway around a light pole after a high-speed chase.
 
The guy in the car was killed, but
Mitchum
survived."

Burns wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer to his next question.
 
"What about the ones in the bank?"
 

"All three of them were killed.
 
One of the tellers tripped a silent alarm, and they were trapped in the bank.
 
There was a shoot-out with the police.
 
That's when the guard died.
 
There's always been a little suspicion that no one meant to kill him and that he just got caught in a crossfire, but the robbers took the blame."

"How did
Mitchum
get away from the police if he was hurt in the wreck?"

"He was in the hospital, under guard.
 
He'd given his story to the police, but nobody believed him, and he probably knew it.
 
He was a student, and apparently pretty well known as a campus agitator.
 
He'd been associated with plenty of radical groups.
 
FTP wasn't one of them, but the fact that he was in the car with them was suspicious to everyone.
 
It didn't look good for him, so he got his hands on somebody's scrub suit and slipped out.
 
That's the last time anyone ever saw him."

Napier folded his notebook closed and stuck it into a pocket.
 
Burns looked back at the thinning funeral crowd.
 
The hearse was pulling away from the curb for the drive to the cemetery.
 
A number of cars followed it.

Elaine stood near the church entrance with the
Tomlins
and the Foxes.
 
Joynell
was talking and waving her hands.
 
Considering what had just happened inside, Mal and
Joynell
probably didn't feel much like going to the burial site.

"So now I guess you better explain why you wanted to know about that guy," Napier said.
 
"That's a pretty funny name just to pick out of a hat."

"It's just a name I ran across," Burns said, thinking that he was telling the absolute truth.

"I believe that," Napier told him.
 
"Like I believe the government is going to repeal the income tax.
 
So explain how you happened to run across it just now.
 
And why did you want me to run it through the computer?
 
I remember seeing an old San Diego State yearbook in Henderson's office, and that's where this
Mitchum
went to school.
 
Is there some connection between the two of them?"

"I don't know," Burns said, and that was also the truth, even if it didn't tell the whole story.

Napier looked over to where Elaine was still talking to
Joynell
Tomlin.
 
"I'm already chapped at you, Burns, or did you not notice that Elaine didn't even speak to me today?"

Burns had noticed, but he hadn't wanted to say anything.
 
No use to rub it in.

"So that's one mark against you," Napier said.
 
"Now it begins to look a whole lot like you're holding out on me.
 
If you've got something on this
Mitchum
, I want to know about it now."

Burns told the truth once again.
 
"I don't have anything.
 
Let's just say it's something I'm looking into."

"You're going to get in trouble again, Burns," Napier said, shaking his head.
 
"I know it."

"I'll let you know as soon as I find out anything for sure.
 
Trust me."

"Ha ha," Napier said.
 
But he wasn't laughing.
 
He wasn't even smiling.

B
y the time Burns got back to Elaine, Mal and Earl were nowhere to be seen, and
Joynell
had finished telling her story.
 
Burns was sorry he had missed it.
 
Joynell
had a way of improving things in the telling, and he was sure that by now the tale of Samantha's unprovoked attack had reached epic proportions.
 
He was about to ask her to repeat it when Mal appeared from around the side of the church, waving his hand wildly in a signal for Burns to join him.

Burns excused himself and walked over to where Tomlin was standing beside Earl Fox in the shade of the building.

"We caught '
em
!" Tomlin said, punching his right fist into his left palm.

Fox was as excited as his friend.
 
"That's right.
 
Red-handed!"

"Good," Burns said.
 
"Who did you catch?"

He was glad Napier wasn't listening.
 
The police chief would probably have told him that
whom
was the correct word.

"Partridge and Holt," Fox said. "Who else?"

"If you caught them, where are they?"

"We didn't catch '
em
in a trap," Tomlin said.
 
"We caught '
em
talking together."

"Oh," Burns said.
 
"That sounds serious.
 
Is there a law against it?"

Tomlin was disgusted.
 
"Look, we're just trying to help.
 
If you want those two to get away with murder, just say so."

Burns was tempted to say "So" and let it go at that, but Tomlin's hunch about
America's Most Wanted
hadn't been that far off the mark.

"All right," he said.
 
"Tell me about it."

"OK," Tomlin said.
 
"I'd heard enough about
Joynell
and that crazy Henderson woman, and I was tired of the way people were looking at us, so Earl and I decided to sneak off behind the church for a cigarette."

No surprise in that, Burns thought, though Earl usually wouldn't smoke right out in the open.

"There's a big bush back there," Tomlin said.
 
"You've seen it."

He was right.
 
A huge
ligustrum
of some kind grew beside the back steps, and Burns had seen it many times.

"There's some space between that bush and the wall," Tomlin went on.
 
"We stepped back in there and lit up.
 
You can hardly even see the sidewalk."

"And they came walking right up to us," Fox said.
 
"We could practically reach out and touch them."

Tomlin laughed.
 
"Fox was so scared the dean would catch him smoking that he nearly fainted.
 
He didn't know whether to eat his cigarette or just die right there."

"What did you do?" Burns asked.

The question was directed to Fox, but it was Tomlin who answered.
 
"He threw it down and stepped on it.
 
But very quietly.
 
They didn't hear a thing.
 
And that's when they started talking."

"About Henderson's murder?"

"No," Tomlin said.
 
"But it was almost as good.
 
Partridge told Holt to come to her house tonight, and they'd 'talk things over.'"

Burns didn't think that was particularly incriminating.
 
He suspected that they were planning to discuss the impending appearance of George (the Ghost)
Kaspar
before the student court.

"What's wrong with talking things over?" he asked.

Tomlin looked at Burns as if Burns were a student who had just asked a really stupid question.
 
"Don't you get it?
 
She was probably talking about Henderson.
 
They know you're getting close, and they're scared."

"I think you're reading a lot into a simple conversation.
 
Boss Napier seems to think that you and Fox are a lot more likely suspects than Holt and the dean."